Those yearning for more of Prime Video’s We Were Liars can immediately find solace in E. Lockhart’s prequel novel Family of Liars, which centers the perspectives of the three Sinclair sisters — Carrie, Penny and Bess played by Mamie Gummer, Caitlin Fitzgerald and Candice King in the show. Come November, though, Lockhart will release a third novel set in the gothic universe of private islands off the shore of Massachusetts.
We Were Liars is now an eight-episode series created by Julie Plec and Carina Adly MacKenzie starring Emily Alyn Lind, Shubham Maheshwari, Joseph Zada and Esther McGregor as the titular four friends who drive the story.
Lockhart announced We Fell Apart, out Nov. 4, 2025, in March of this year, and much like her Family of Liars prequel, the idea had been percolating for some time. A visit to a specific building sparked her inspiration for the third novel.
“I was just like, ‘I’m standing in a novel.’ I’m standing in a novel by me. I took pictures. I was making notes, and by the time night was up, I was starting We Fell Apart,” she told Deadline. “I had figured out a lot of the elements of that story, which is set across the water from Beechwood Island, where We Were Liars is set.”
Lockhart, who has a doctorate in English literature from Columbia University — specifically the nineteenth-century British novel and illustration, immediately knew that this setting was ripe for a story.
“I had been floating a lot of potential We Were Liars universe ideas. They had been in my head for a while, but nothing really took shape as a story until I was on vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, which is part of the setting for We Were Liars,” she said. “I got invited by a friend of a friend to go and see this house that was the summer house of a famous brutalist architect.”
Lockhart told Brit + Co that the story is neither a prequel, nor a sequel, to We Were Liars, but a story that happens simultaneously with summer 15 of her first book in that universe.
“This house was absolutely mad. It had four towers like a castle, but it was built like a summer house, and on the inside it was just an incredible house,” she added. “And it was in terrible disrepair. There were animals living in the outbuildings, and squatters had been in there and a big, round swimming pool also.”
